“Open for works” Projects

The “Open for Works” concept encapsulates the scope for visitors to witness the various preservation and recovery works ongoing in the various different parks and monuments and also providing the opportunity for dialogue with the technical staff involved. This represents one of the most emblematic Parques de Sintra initiatives and incorporated into the most diverse requalification projects taking place in the parks, palaces, gardens and monuments and always with their doors open to the public.

Based upon this concept, Parques de Sintra includes, within all restoration projects that do not call into question the safety of either the visitor or the worker, the demand that such work take place on full view to the public. The specialist staff are able to respond to the questions posed and are duly coached by Parques de Sintra to proactively explain the work they are engaged in to visitors. The corresponding objectives include maintaining the work ongoing visible, enabling visitors to recognise the demands involved in maintaining this heritage (simultaneously natural, architectonic and museological) and grasping the human and financial investment necessary to achieving these goals. Additionally, witnessing the works makes the notion of their progression more immediate, which in turn drives a better appreciation of the final results.

Parques de Sintra also believes that the fact of visitors having witnessed this type of work may prove of relevance in drawing out vocations given that many thousands of persons each year get to observe a type of work otherwise normally only undertaken in offices closed off to the general public.